


Welcome to Knit Vale

by thesunisloud



Series: Welcome to Knit Vale [1]
Category: Welcome to Night Vale
Genre: Cecil is Inhuman, Crack, Humor, Knitting, POV First Person, Yarn, this needs more puns
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-12-05
Updated: 2014-12-05
Packaged: 2018-02-28 07:41:09
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,486
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2724212
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thesunisloud/pseuds/thesunisloud
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Carlos makes a surprising discovery about the construction of Night Vale and its residents.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Welcome to Knit Vale

Cecil often voiced his worries that things would come unraveled. 

He worried that the fabric of reality and the tapestry of life were so fragile that even minor disturbances could make them come undone.

One of the first things I heard on the radio, in fact, on the day I drove into town, was a terrifying monologue about how improper exercise could cause the circulatory system to unravel.

I did not think the broadcaster was being literal, of course, even though he used the phrase, “your heart could literally unravel.” After all, precious few people are educated enough to use the word “literally” correctly. I mentally moved him to my list of people to never have an intellectual conversation with. 

The entirety of Knit Vale had an odd texture to it, as though the way it reflected light was not quite normal. This extended from the buildings to the people to the food to the streets to the dust in the air. Many other things caught my eye for study, but after a few weeks, I set about investigating the phenomenon seriously.

My first test subject was a young woman. She was a server at Arby’s, on the day I was taken by the odd yet familiar yet not-quite-right yet almost-right texture of my roast beef sandwich and finally dove into a full-out scrutiny of it. I was just making out little balls of meat-like substance that resembled lint when she asked me if I was all right. An animated discussion of my observations about the curious texture of the town ensued (she did not find it unnatural,) and, when she began to mumble after an hour about her shift being over, I invited her back to my lab.

She was a bit taken by my enthusiasm, with a bit of honest curiosity lifting its innocent head above her general air of disbelief. She watched sincerely as I, with her permission, took a tiny sample of skin from her elbow. 

I had a band-aid ready, but she did not bleed.

She distractedly rubbed the spot I had snipped while she watched me stain and mount the sample on a slide. By the time I had set it under my microscope, she had begun to scratch quite insistently, picking and digging at the tiny wound. 

I hunched over my microscope, surprised by the results that showed at as little as 50X magnification. The nature of the sample that was suggested under low magnification continued to prove itself consistently at each deeper level— 100X, 200X, 500X, 5000X. 

The sample was made out of fiber. To be specific, it consisted entirely of very fine yarn. 

I turned to my test subject to take another sample. This is when I noticed a distinct look of distress on her face. She was still picking at her arm, but now she was pulling out a tangle of thread all the way down to her wrist.

She was unraveling. 

It hurts me too much to relay the grim details of the things that were said and done by both of us over the next half-hour. In short, this poor young thing knew that there were emergency procedures for this situation, but was too sleep-deprived and panicky to recall them. She seemed to think it involved some sort of tucking and tying, but the clumsy efforts of us both only made the unravelling worse. Solid bone emerged and then began to dissolve into threads as well. I finally got up and rushed across the room to where my cell phone was resting in the pocket of my outdoors lab coat, intent on calling the Knit Vale Community Hospital. 

The girl jumped up to follow me. 

She snagged on her chair.

She made a single, cottony cry that made me turn around in time to see her tumble toward me, already moving forward too quickly to stop, as her arm dissolved into rapidly whipping threads, then her chest, up her neck, and, with a particularly final tug to the center of her torso, she fell completely apart into a pile of tangled yarn.

She had, literally, unraveled.

I must say I was distraught. Here my experiment had reduced a living human being to a state that was, as far as I could tell, utterly dead. I admit I panicked then. It is an embarrassment for a scientist to admit such a thing, but in light of what I have done to this innocent girl, such shame is not punishment enough. So I say it again and I say it not even one billionth of enough times to absolve myself of my mistake: I panicked. I gathered the pile of girl-colored yarn into my arms. It was airy and soft and much, much lighter than the girl had appeared to be. I made some childish attempts to mash and pull the tangle into the approximation of a human shape. Then I called the hospital. They refused to speak with me without a credit card, and I had not yet gotten around to applying for the only brand that Knit Vale accepts— the Masters Of Us All Card. 

So I called the only person I knew had any knowledge about unraveling.

I called Cecil.

He had given me his number, several times in fact, all with a lot of winking and suggestions that I call him if I needed him or if anything came up that required his attention. It rang three times and, luckily, he picked up— I had caught him when he was relaxing at home.

I had trouble articulating what was wrong. I told him only that he needed to come right away. He made some odd noises, and when I clarified that I was at my lab, he got very anxious and said he’d be there in about fifteen minutes.

He arrived more like 35 minutes later, looking freshly showered and dressed. He was very nervous; he must have suspected the severity of the situation. When his eyes fell on the tangled pile of yarn that was once a living, smiling girl, he fell to his knees.

"Oh, Carlos," he said mournfully. "What happened?"

"She— She came, uh. I think she unravelled. Like you said things can do."

"Indeed she did," Cecil said. He gathered up the pile in his arms.

"So, you can fix her?"

“‘Fix her?’”

"You know… sort of… ravel her back up? So she’s a living girl again?"

"Carlos, she’s been unraveled too long. Only Old Woman Josie has the skill to knit completely unravelled people back together, and this yarn is already necrotic."

"So she’s—" — and here my penance will never be satisfied no matter how many times I tell you my voice hitched with tears — "— dead?"

"Yes. Ah, Daisy. You were a good intern." Cecil stuffed the knotted mess into a plastic shopping bag. "I’ll bury her in the graveyard when I go in to work tomorrow."

"Uh, what do you mean by ‘intern?’ She was an Arby’s server."

"Yes. Daisy was an unpaid intern at Knit Vale Community Radio; she was saving money for college by working at Arby’s. Good girl, hard worker. Always fell apart a bit when threatened, though. I’m frankly surprised she survived to this age."

"I… Cecil, it was me. I unraveled her. I snipped her threads, and she came apart."

"Oh, Carlos. You are perfect and intelligent and more beautiful than the ink on a Breathing License, and I know you meant no harm. Listen. These things happen. Calm down, I’ll get you some Pinkberry’s." 

I was quiet and defeated over my frozen yogurt sundae; Cecil, in contrast, was a ball of nervous energy. He kept kicking the soft bag under the table with his fidgeting feet. I mourned this poor girl for a good twenty minutes before I finally came back to myself and asked, “Is everyone in Knit Vale made out of yarn?”

Cecil’s eyebrows raised. “Why, yes.”

"And the buildings?"

"Of course."

"The… the dust? The food? The fuzzy stars?"

"Yes, Carlos, what else would they be made out of?"

"Take my hand."

I offered Cecil my hand so he could inspect my own meaty construction, but he flushed bright red, hyperventilated, and then passed out on the floor. I called Knit Vale Community Hospital for him, using the Masters Of Us All Card he had already set out for the check. I made sure a Pinkberry’s employee kept an eye on both the unconscious radio host and the wadded remains of the girl. I then went on my way. 

It would be many more weeks before Cecil contacted me again. But that is another story.

 _This_  story is over. It is perhaps the most important story I carry with me to this day: the story I must never, ever forget. It is the story of the moment I realized what a danger I am to Knit Vale.

**Author's Note:**

> Please comment. It brightens my day.


End file.
